纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 068湿婆与雪山女神像（2）（在线收听）

This week we're looking at the world around seven hundred years ago, and how different religious traditions tried, through objects, to bring people directly into contact with the divine. In this programme we're in Orissa, a densely populated rice-producing state in north-east India, on the Bay of Bengal. Around 1300, it was a prosperous, sophisticated Hindu kingdom, which built thousands, literally thousands, of magnificent temples. This was the great period of Orissan religious architecture, and the buildings that were most admired were the ones that had the most extravagant ornamentation.

Most of these temples were dedicated to the god Shiva. For the people of Orissa, Shiva - one of the three central deities of Hinduism, the god of paradoxes, the god who forever creates and destroys - was the lord of their land. In Shiva all opposites are reconciled, and this programme's object, a sculpture, comes from one of the many Orissa Shiva temples.